


Your shadow at morning, at evening

by karszi



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: (i.e. very weird and very sad and very spooky), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Dreams, Established Relationship, M/M, Magical Realism, Psychological Horror, Supernatural Elements, White Walkers, doppelgangers, things are about to get lynchian babey
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-20
Updated: 2019-06-20
Packaged: 2020-05-15 09:32:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19293007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karszi/pseuds/karszi
Summary: Tormund's dreams of Jon do not end with waking up, though he has been gone a little while now.





	Your shadow at morning, at evening

**Author's Note:**

> [Playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6zHzYdJP4i8zj7DKwAXy8d?si=ZheEgeMTQYGGwZ63Kp0_OA)
> 
>  
> 
> Warning: This work contains non-graphic references to an offscreen major character death resulting from a mining accident, as well as themes of post-traumatic stress disorder and families/children dealing with loss. If you think any of this could be triggering or difficult to handle, please don't read! Stay safe & healthy <3

Tormund feels his eldest daughter walk into the kitchen before he sees her. Birgitta is as heavy-footed as he ever was at her age, though her every barefoot step is made with caution, self-conscious of its own noise. Dalla might felt her some slippers but there’s no need, not when Tormund tromps around on the same linoleum floor with triple the weight and steel-toe work boots. No need to make her feel a nuisance. Gitta is sensitive about these things. 

No sooner is his second coffee finished than Munda rushes in behind her like a trailing hurricane, no quieter somehow despite being a good half her size. She puts effort into her stomping; a girl after his own heart. A week ago she might have torn in laughing, but her lips are pressed firmly together this morning. She keeps the sound in with a visible effort. 

Tormund drowns the silence out with noise, like always. He just needs to work harder at it now. 

He remembers that first night, answering the phone in the kitchen with the girls still having dinner behind him and listening to some voice go on about an on-site accident and spousal compensation and funeral arrangements, growing more distant with every word. Edd had called him on his cell minutes later, incoherent, crying. He hung up. He didn’t even answer Sam’s call. He smiled and laughed overloudly and picked his daughters up in each arm to carry them straight to bed, no bath beforehand, a special treat. No, Munda, Jon will not be home tonight. Not yet. He told them the next morning. 

“Good morning, girls.”

“Morning, da.” It is the same sleepy chorus every day, though subdued in the past week. They take their seats at the little kitchen table. Birgitta keeps her eyes on the floor the whole way. She has to press her side against the wall to give such a wide berth to the empty chair at the far corner. 

He sets their bowls and cups down with a flourish, Munda’s with the accompanying striped bendy straw, and bestows a damp, scratchy kiss on each small forehead.

“Oatmeal again?” She whines with all the appropriate dramatics of a girl of six. Her effort at stoicism seems to be abandoned for the morning. Birgitta shoots her a look that means murder, and Tormund doesn’t need to fake the smile on his lips when he meets them at the table. He puts a reassuring hand in Birgitta’s short hair before tugging at one of Munda’s braids. He used to do the same to Ygritte on the longer winter nights when all the cousins would pile together before the fireplace to sleep and she kept him up with her snoring. It was not rare to receive a slap in the face for his efforts.

“Would you prefer lutefisk and potatoes, my little princess?”

Munda wrinkles her nose and laughs. “Eugh! Potatoes maybe.”

“Ah, too bad for you, we have to save the potatoes for supper tonight. The Tarlys are coming up for a visit, and uncle Edd too.”

“For the funeral?” Her voice takes on a strange inflection.

“Aye.” Tormund keeps his tone light and level. Munda has been taking everything so well, but he couldn’t ask for it to last forever. He braces himself for the storm of questions to follow. It doesn’t come.

Brigitta’s spoon taps at her plastic bowl in the silence. 

He doesn’t let himself begin to wish that Jon were here, but he can’t help but imagine it for a moment. Just to offer some peace of mind, some patience with the girls, with the guests, the well-wishers and sympathetic casseroles dropped off at the doorstep. He stares so hard at the empty seat opposite him until he can almost see the outline of an absent body, a memory made physical. He can wait. It is important to talk about these things, or that’s what Mance had told him. That man and all his words, all his opinions.

Munda is looking up at her older sister through a furrowed brow. Brigitta looks down at her breakfast mildly, paying close attention to the patterns her spoon draws in the dregs at the bottom of the bowl. She moves it in half circles and turns the handle between her fingers.

He nudges her chair good-naturedly with his foot. “Don’t play with your food.”

“Sorry.”

They pass a few more minutes in fidgeting silence.

The uncomfortable peace is abruptly broken when Munda takes a breath and stands from her chair abruptly. “Gitta said she saw–”

“I didn’t, shut up!” Birgitta jumps from her seat. She has a hand around Munda’s mouth before she can get the words out.

“Hey, hey!” Tormund grabs them both by their shoulders and pulls them apart. It doesn’t take much. Birgitta, never one to resort to physical violence, is already looking stricken. Munda claws ineffectually at the air between them. He pulls her back further.

“Go and get your coat, Munda.”

“But the bus doesn’t come for another half hour!”

“Go.”

“But–”

“Now.”

She rushes off in a huff without another word, nearly knocking a chair over on the way. Tormund returns his attention to his left. Birgitta is staring down at her feet, trying to shuffle towards the escape of the hallway. Her hair falls like a curtain around her face and he pulls the light strands back behind one ear.

He can do the screaming and the stomping and the pulling of ears and pigtails. That was the way of things for so long. Birgitta’s way will always be less familiar to him, but he likes to think he knows his own daughter better than this after eleven years. 

“So what’s this that you didn’t do?”

His words are met with silence.

“Gitta, you have to talk to me.” 

She purses her lips and looks at the wall behind his head, eyes empty. He sighs.

“We’re allowed to talk about these things, hey? That’s what people do.” 

She opens her mouth, still avoiding his gaze. She looks like she is choosing her words carefully. Tormund holds his breath.

“You’re going to be late for work, Da.”

“Shit.” Tormund glances behind him at the clock. She isn’t wrong, and he can’t afford to miss another shift, not now. He pushes himself to his feet and pulls on a second sweater for good measure. His reflective coat has been missing for nearly a week now, since a little after the accident. He must have lost track of it somehow in all the chaos and haze. He can borrow a spare from Mance. “Lunch boxes are in the fridge. Get your sister bundled up.”

“I know.”

“And be sure to let Ghost in if he comes to the door before you leave.” Though he hasn’t seen hair nor hide of Jon’s great beast of a wolf-dog since the accident. He hasn’t told the girls, but they haven’t asked.

She gives him a smile at last, though it is strained and her brows are drawn. “I know. Hope you have a good day at work.”

“Thank you, sweetheart.”

His hard hat is hanging on the last peg nearest to the door. Under it is Munda’s striped knit cap and an umbrella, a compact thing with little brown bears printed over the nylon. His eyes fall down the wall to four pairs of rain boots of varying sizes by his feet. Three are black; the last is a glossy red with little rubber handles. He smiles and walks outside, where the cold knocks the breath out of him and everything is made bright and covered over by a fresh layer of snow.

———

Tormund meets the consoling nods of this new morning with bright eyes and is glad of his unkempt beard for hiding his mouth. All he has ever wanted to do when people stare – and they do stare – is to meet their gaze with a smile, but that feels wrong. He doesn’t know what is and isn’t appropriate anymore. He is new to all of this. In these small fishing towns, everyone tends to know your business. In the small fishing towns north of the border, in Hardhome, it is their business too.

The new site is on the far edge of town. Tormund had taken his bicycle in the early autumn months when they were just beginning to lay the foundation of the new municipal building, but snow and ice have become a more common occurrence and he expects the first big storm of the season won’t be far behind. It is easier to walk. It gives him time.

Ygritte greets him at the entrance with a shovel on her shoulder for the snow and a grin on her face, which he likes to think is just for him. Everything feels familiar for a moment.

“Fuck off, Giantsbane. You were meant to go on leave three days ago.”

Ygritte was the one who introduced him to Jon. He remembers the story of how they met all too well, he and half the town. Jon had sent her “some fruity girly mixed drink” from across the bar, some newcomer boy from the mining camp on the border. Pretty face, but not much going on in the head – or at least those had been her words. She had dumped her pint over his head. By the next day, she was showing him off around town on her arm. Another month and they were no longer on speaking terms. Only managed to patch things up in time for Ygritte to stand by Jon when he said his vows at the heart tree. Jon never did tell him what had come between them.

“Who’s going to help you reach those high places, girl? Orell?”

After the wedding, Tormund learned that Jon had only ordered Ygritte a cosmopolitan because it was his favorite. He laughed the whole night and went out for limes and cranberry juice the next morning.

“Ah, I can see right through you. You just like being the only one with the big handsaw.” She winks.

He grins, shrugging. Ygritte doesn’t ask why he can’t bear to be alone in that house, so he doesn’t have to answer. She walks with him to the office trailer to clock in and grab the rest of his gear.

“You see the sky this morning?” she asks, kicking snow off the steps when he emerges.

“Aye. Big one headed our way.”

“Bet you the project will be iced over by the end of the week.”

“All the years I’ve worked for him, Mance has never halted a job before the first. He isn’t about to start now.”

“Oh what do you know, Tall-Talker?”

Tormund laughs the weight of the old nickname off his back. There is too much standing between him and those old, half-wild days, but he has always been prone to reminiscing. “More than you, still.”

They are minutes into shoveling snow off of the concrete when a faint shadow falls over Tormund’s boots in the cloudy morning light. He looks up to see kindly eyes and a soft frown, gentle features on a solemn face. 

“Tormund.” Mance nods. Tormund holds his breath, ready for a gentle reprimand and already biting back the argument on his tongue, but Mance only nods. He has never understood how the man avoids conflict as easy as breathing and still manages to get his way in the end. He has no doubt he will be sent packing with hours to spare before the work day is done, but for now, he can appreciate that Mance is trying to respect his decision. That might be giving their fearless foreman too much credit, though. Maybe he’s just trying not to start a fight. Tormund can appreciate that too.

———

There is no sign of Ghost on the long walk home, which Tormund makes by early afternoon, in the end. Mance finally sends him home with overtime pay and a kind word. He is half relieved to make it back before dark, in time to start dinner and put out extra chairs and blankets and set up the air mattress in the girls’ room, and half afraid to leave himself alone in such an empty house, so much emptier than before. There are times when he walks around Jon simply because he expects him to be there, only to find the space next to him empty. He is treading lines into the carpet with his boots pacing late at night, waiting for him to come home even though he remembers why he shouldn’t.

Ghost is not in the yard. He is not in the garden. Tormund scans the treeline beyond the house for a familiar pair of red eyes but doesn’t find them. He catches the shadow of something else, though, further in, and looks harder.

His eyes are not what they once were – this was always a point of contention with Jon, whose vision was failing too, and faster, but refused to give in and get glasses before Tormund – and the shadow of the trees makes it harder still to make out the figure. Larger than a deer and stood upright, but wrong in the posture somehow. Something about it tells him that it cannot be human. Something about it tells him to go inside and lock the door behind him. When he blinks it is gone.

Tormund shakes his head and continues on his way. There is a table to be set, and beds to be made, and whatever may or may not by lying in wait behind the house can wait longer, until the morning. He is not about to let it in for supper.

———

Tormund cannot remember a time when he did not live at the little old wooden house at the end of the lane, at the edge of the wood, because there never was one. As a child, the downstairs bedroom was his to have and keep clean and share with the cousins as they came to visit, but the attic bedroom was his father’s domain, and he had scarcely dared to venture up to it even after his father passed and he inherited the property. 

Now that Jon has passed, Tormund is too old for ghost stories, but he still finds that people still take up space after they have gone. He keeps to his side of the bed at night and leaves two glasses of water on the nightstand.

He is squeezed halfway into the attic closet to reach the air mattress when he hears the girls come home, shutting the door and stepping around the kitchen on uncharacteristically quiet feet. 

“How was school, girls?” he shouts into a spare comforter pressed up against his head.

All he hears in response is the shutting of another door. The girls’ room, he guesses. Maybe they can’t hear his voice, muffled by all these boxes and spare bedding sets in his face as it is. Or maybe Birgitta is still cross with him about this morning, and this silent treatment is just his penance. It wouldn’t be the first time.

There is a ring at the door a moment later. A beat, then another ring. A third. Must be Sam, he guesses, or his young boy wreaking havoc on Tormund’s doorbell.

“Gitta, would you get the door?” No response. “Munda?” Another ring. He shakes his head and disentangles himself from the confined space of the closet. If Gitta wants to put him through the wringer, he will let her, but there’s no need for her to bring her sister into it.

He unlocks the door hurriedly – struggling momentarily with the old handle, so prone to getting stuck – and his suspicions are confirmed at the sight that meets him. Gilly pulls Little Sam bodily away from the doorbell amid his enthusiastic button-pushing. “Oh! Hello, Tormund,” she says. “I’m very sorry.”

“Good to see you, Tormund! And would you look who we ran into on our way!” Sam exclaims from behind them, gesturing down with his head as his hands are otherwise occupied. Before him is little Munda, standing on her tip-toes atop Sam’s boots, hands held in his own, giggling every time he takes a lurching step. Birgitta shuffles her feet beside them.

The girls are still in their coats and backpacks, boots packed heavy with snow. 

Tormund looks over his shoulder into the house. Nothing is out of place in the entryway, or the kitchen, or the hall. The door to the girls’ room is wide open, as it was when he came home, as is the door to the bathroom. Every window is undisturbed. The door was still locked, he realizes, when he came downstairs to open it. He turns his head back to face the others.

Sam is staring expectantly. Munda bounces in her place on his feet.

Tormund pastes on a big smile, all teeth, and makes a show of stepping aside. “Come in!”

They are hardly in the door when Munda pulls Sam towards Tormund and tugs at his sleeve. “Da, when is uncle Edd coming?” 

The doorbell rings again. Tormund will always welcome company with open arms, but he’ll be happy never to hear that sound again.

“That must be him now! Let’s go and let him in, Munda,” Sam says obligingly, gently urging her to detach herself from his limbs.

While Sam and the rest are occupied, Tormund leans down and puts a hand on Gitta’s shoulder and pulls her aside.

“Birgitta, do you still have the spare key?”

She looks up at him with wide eyes. “I left it in our room. Why? What’s happening?” She sounds terribly worried. He regrets saying anything at all.

“Nothing, Birdy. It’s fine.” Jon used to call her that, gently, when she needed a little extra kindness and calm. Now, it doesn’t seem to have the effect he had hoped. “Why don’t you go say hello to Edd? He looks like he could use some cheering up.”

She huffs, but she is smiling. “Doesn’t he always?”

He checks in their bedroom while she joins her sister to greet a grumbling Edd. He finds the key sitting innocuously on the bookshelf with some feeling of relief. The only other spare key had been Jon’s, and that had been recovered with all other belongings on his person the day of the accident. Tormund keeps the plastic bag in his nightstand drawer. He knows no one has gotten into there. There is no cause for concern yet. It is an old house, and no old house is without a little personality. Some floors settle loudly and some doors shut on their own.

He steps out of the hallway and rejoins their little greeting party. Gitta, the gracious host in his absence, is helping Edd maneuver around his crutches to take his coat off. Munda is sat on the floor, drawing on his cast in bright yellow magic marker.

“That’s not going to show up, sweetheart,” Tormund says with a smile. Munda ignores him in favor of continuing her masterpiece.

“Thank you, Birgitta,” Edd says through a sigh. He turns to Tormund once Munda has been ushered away by Gilly to go and play with Little Sam in the kitchen. “Of course your adolescent daughter is already taller than me, you great mammoth bastard.”

Tormund crosses his arms. “You’re late.”

“Yeah, well, bit hard to get around all those snowdrifts on crutches. Would it kill you to shovel your walkway?”

He drops the gruff act and laughs, patting Edd on the back heartily, just a bit too hard. “Doing alright?”

“All things considered?” Edd gives him a flat smile. “No. How are you holding up?” At that, his smile softens and his brow furrows, looking somehow sympathetic and self-deprecating all at once. Oh, he has missed Edd.

“Do you want the pretty answer or the honest answer?”

“Ah, I think I can take it.”

Tormund takes a breath. “Not well.”

Edd closes his eyes and nods, grimacing.

“But the girls are taking everything alright, I think. That’s the important thing.”

“Yeah?”

“I am worried about Gitta, though,” he confesses quietly, running a hand across his beard. 

“She just needs time. Nothing you could give her but plenty of time and plenty of love. Losing a parent young is hard, we both know that.”

Tormund raises a brow. “When did Dolorous Edd get wise all of a sudden?”

“Your guess is as good as mine, big guy.”

———

When dinner is finished, Gilly offers to get all the children ready for bed under the promise that Edd and Sam clear the table. Tormund sees them settle back in with a bottle of 9-year Northern whiskey – recently uncovered from the pantry – on his way up the stairs and motions for them to get on without him. 

Tormund has returned to his ongoing battle with the closet, pulling spare sheets out for Edd’s makeshift bed on the couch. He hears slow steps behind him and turns with a start, but it is only Gitta, standing hesitant in his doorway at the head of the stairs.

“Everything all right, sweetheart?”

She nods.

“Need more blankets?”

She shakes her head. She has become so quiet, lately. Tormund wishes with all his heart that she would shout with her sister again. He wishes she would tell her about her day at school, animated, without all the weight of a life lived longer than her years. He is grateful that the house is full again and the noise the company offers, only if for this one night.

“I’m just going to have a chat with uncle Sam and uncle Edd in the kitchen, and Aunt Gilly is going to read you all a story. She and Sam are staying in my bedroom with Little Sam, so I’ve set up the air mattress and the three of us are going to have a little spend-the-night in you and your sister’s room. Does that sound good?”

“Yeah.”

When he and Jon were still something fresh and tentative, when Ghost was still getting to know him, he had been wary. Too wary to let anyone too near to his master for too long. Tormund had to build that trust, to approach the wolf-dog carefully. He had to be steady. He has to be steady now, too. Gitta has something to say, something important to her. He can be still and quiet and gentle, and he can have patience. He sits on the edge of the bed and waits.

“Da, wait. I have to tell you something.” She takes a breath, and Tormund holds his own. “I, I dreamt I saw Jon. I keep dreaming of him.”

“Oh, Gitta.” Tormund’s heart breaks for her. “I know. I do too. Every night. It’s alright.”

“But then I wake up and he, he,” she stutters, growing more upset.

“He’s gone. I know.” He keeps his voice soft. He understands all too well what she must be going through.

“No.” Her face twists bitterly with some emotion he doesn’t recognize in those stoic, ruddy features. She is frustrated and afraid, and he doesn’t know what he can do to help her. He can hear it in the waver of her voice. “He isn’t. He won’t leave me be.”

Tormund freezes where he stands. He doesn’t know what to say. He gathers himself and moves to kneel before her, looking hard up into her eyes. “Gitta, what do you mean? Did you see Jon in the house?”

She scuffs her sock-clad foot against the wood floor. “No. I was probably just dreaming.” Her voice is hollow.

“Birgitta. Look at me.” She turns away. “No, look at me. You know I won’t ever let anything happen to you or your sister. You know I’m always going to protect you.” It is not a question.

“Yes, da. I know.” She is meeting his eyes now, finally, with a watery gaze. “I’m not frightened when you’re there.”

He walks her down the stairs, back into her room where Munda sits blissfully unaware of any trouble with Gilly and Little Sam. He is loath to let go of her hand.

———

Sam and Edd are leaned over their glasses in a hushed row when Tormund returns to the table. Or Edd is trying to have a row, and Sam is barreling on, oblivious.

“I’m telling you, he saw something down there. We all did, I know, I remember, but Jon, the things he told me–” 

“I don’t want to fucking hear it, Sam.”

“But Edd–“

“Pour me a glass,” Tormund interrupts, sitting heavily in his seat. Sam stops talking, but Edd is still glaring daggers across the table.

They are both eager enough to change the subject once he joins them. “So Jon’s whole family is really going to be here?” Sam asks.

“Aye.”

“Jon never did talk much about them, did he? Well, except his brothers and sisters. Always had so much to say about them. Are they all coming too?”

“I don’t know about all of them. Could be. I spoke to Eddard Stark on the phone, and he only said he’s bringing the family.”

“Eddard was his father, right?” Edd asks.

“Think so. Sansa’s the one I called at first, though. Jon’s sister. Only Stark whose number I had in my phone. She handed me off, said her father should hear the news first.”

“What was he like?” Sam presses, leaning up on his elbows.

“Tired. Devastated. I don’t fucking know. I called him in the middle of the night to tell him his estranged son died in a mine at the edge of the world. What do you want to hear?”

“You’re right. Sorry.” Sam pauses. “I miss him so much, I really do. You know when he–“

“Gods, Sam, could you please just stop,” Edd sighs, putting a hand over his face.

“No, wait, this is a good story. So it’s our first week, newly hired, think Jon has been here a week longer than me at this point, I believe. And Alliser is running employee training like always, you remember, Edd, though I think you came on before his promotion. So he’s giving me the worst time of his life and I think, well, this is it for me, but where am I supposed to go from here? And, and then Jon walks up from out of the blue and says, he says,” he trails off, tone empty of the enthusiasm he started off with.

Tormund finishes his glass.

Sam sighs. “I don’t know. Sorry. I just wish he were here with us now.”

Edd stands up at that, pushing his chair out against the floor with a loud sound. His mouth is a thin line. He puts his hands on the table.

“I wish he were here too, but I lost him, Sam. I lost him, I lost my job, I lost half my fucking toes and my best fucking friend. He was my best friend, and I had him, and I lost him. He was right behind me and then he wasn’t, and now I’m supposed to sit here and fucking reminisce about how great he was? Fine, I can fucking reminisce. He was great. A great man. A good man. Best man I ever knew. It should have been me, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t, and now he’s gone, and I’m alone.”

Sam gapes up at him, finally opening his mouth with a face twisted in sympathy. Pity, Tormund might call it. “You’re not alone, Edd. You’ve got us.” 

“Oh seven shitting hells, spare me.”

Edd hobbles off into the hallway like an aimless missile, spitting fire in his wake. Tormund knows many men like that – and might well be one of them – but he knows Edd well enough to know that he is not one of those men. He turns to Sam, who shrugs in turn, looking as taken aback as Tormund feels, fear and concern painted all over his face.

———

Fuck Sam and his fucking platitudes. And Tormund with those big sad eyes and that face he pulls when he thinks no one’s looking. Isn’t Dolorous Edd entitled to a little sadness of his own? 

And that really is the worst bit of it. He sees the danger in that kind of thinking. He knows what he is meant to be doing. He understands his role perfectly. He should be out there like Sam, grieving respectfully and honoring his memory, making the bereaved smile. Not making it all about him. Tormund deserves his sympathy, not whatever the fuck that was. This isn’t his tragedy. He wasn’t married to the man; he only loved him.

That doesn’t keep him from feeling sorry. Sorry for Tormund, so sorry for Jon, sorry for himself most of all.

Edd remembers Jon as he was when they met, full of boyish arrogance and ignorance and candor. He remembers him as he was when he died, shining like a port in a storm through the darkness and noise of the collapse, selfless to the last breath, he supposes. It is as difficult to reconcile those two men as it is to remember how he was in the interim: helping Sam get reassigned to admin work when the anxiety attacks got out of hand, smiling at every joke Edd has ever made, introducing them to Ygritte, and later Tormund, so sheepish and shy. 

He still doesn’t understand why Jon turned around. 

The water is hot against his hands. Too hot. That’s what happens when you only turn on the hot water, Tollett. You’re wasting all the hot water, Tollett. What did you do to deserve all that hot water, Tollett? 

Lately, the voice of reason in his head is sounding less like his mother and more like angry Alliser Thorne, the bane of every fresh hire’s existence at Castle Black, their little mine site, affectionately named so for all the coal. He only bunked with the man for a month at most, when his and Jon’s donga got flooded out, but it had been the worst month of his life. Well, not the worst, not by a long shot, but it certainly involved the greatest amount of effort, so it is at least comparable. Take your boots off at the door, Tollett, you’re tracking coal dust on my carpet. Quit forgetting your gear, Tollett, or I’ll have to write you up to Mormont. Leave him, Tollett, or none of us are getting out alive. Those may well have been his last words, or maybe he swore when that rock hit him, and Edd just didn’t hear.

“Shut up, Alliser.” He pauses. “Shut up, Edd,” he adds as an afterthought, just to clarify that he knows Alliser isn’t in the room with him. He isn’t losing it. He went to that funeral too, the day before yesterday. “Gods, I am slipping.”

“Edd…” 

The voice is so familiar Edd doesn’t think twice of it. “What?” 

He turns, then his brain catches up with the rest of him and he freezes. He couldn’t possibly explain what he sees there standing behind him, not for the world, but it looks down at him with great big glassy blue eyes and he knows in his heart that it is not Jon.

It looks like him, though, so much like him, right down to the lips, down to the scars. If it was Jon, if he could just see Jon, just touch him once more…

It reaches out a hand. 

———

Edd stumbles out of the hallway and does not stop when he reaches the kitchen table where Tormund is sat in silence with Sam, waiting. Tormund stands to meet him.

“The fuck are you going?” He knows he should stop, knows a fight won’t solve his problems for him like they were always meant to, but he puts that firm hand on the smaller man’s shoulder anyway as he passes. Edd turns and looks him in the eye and he waits for the vicious and vindictive anger, the frustration that he feels with himself projected onto the face of another.

Edd turns and looks him in the eye and all Tormund can see is fear. Terror, even. The man looks like he’s about to piss himself, or burst into tears. He’s shaking all over.

“Edd?” Sam asks tentatively. Edd doesn’t spare him a glance. He shakes Tormund off with a stilted shrug and Tormund lets his hand fall. He and Sam only watch as Edd struggles with his crutches and the door handle, swearing frantically. 

“It sticks,” Sam says, ever wanting to be helpful. “You have to lift and pull. Are you all right?”

Edd ignores him. Tormund can hardly stand to watch him fumble with the door handle any longer. He steps up to nudge him aside and opens it himself with practiced ease, standing in the doorway before Edd can pass through.

“What did you see?” 

Edd says nothing, can’t look him in the eye. He tries to get past.

In all his years knowing these two men through Jon, Tormund has seen Samwell in distress. He has seen him panic and mumble and shout, cry tears of pain and anger and sorrow, and still considers him to be a level-headed man compared to Tormund himself. Next to Sam, Edd’s heart must be made of fucking stone. Tormund has only seen him so rattled one other time, or rather heard, on the call he made the night of the accident. So maybe Edd is shaken from this alone. Maybe he didn’t see anything. Maybe this is about what it seems: a man grieving. Maybe he truly is just afraid to be alone. Or maybe it is something worse, if there could be such a thing.

“Tollett. Look at me. What did you see?”

“I have to go. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Tormund lets him go. He stands in the doorway and watches the shaken man stumble down the path to the town, and wonders where he will stay tonight. He knows he shouldn’t let him leave, but he can’t bring himself to make him stay. 

“I hope he’s all right. He’s been through so much lately.” Sam fidgets with his glass, still sat at the table. “I didn’t mean– that’s not to diminish your struggle, of course, Tormund. I’m sorry. Do you think he’ll come to the funeral? I hope he does. I think Jon would want him to be there.” 

Tormund grunts. Fucking southerners. One would think their dead are living, with all their wants and needs and eyes and ears open from beyond the grave. “Jon doesn’t want anything anymore, Tarly,” he says a little too forcefully, and breathes until his shoulders lower. He leaves Sam there looking sufficiently contrite, nursing that last whiskey, watching the ice cube melt, and almost feels sorry. 

There is still the matter of the bathroom, of what Edd saw. He doesn’t forget Gitta’s stories, nor the figure hunched between the trees.

He opens the door slowly. Nothing seems out of the organized chaos of a bathroom shared with two messy daughters but for a faint set of damp footprints on the floor, facing the sink. A man’s feet, probably, though not quite so large as Tormund’s own. The children certainly didn’t make them. The water that is left is dark and clouded with soil. The prints end at the skirting as if whoever left them had been crowded against the wall. Tormund has trouble moving around the crowded room on his own; two people could barely fit if they were standing parallel, chest to back.

Tormund kneels to touch the linoleum. The water under his fingers is cold, like snowmelt.

He thinks of Edd in his cast and of Sam still fidgeting with his half-empty drink at the table. He steps across the hall and eases open the door into the girls’ room where he finds that Gilly has fallen asleep putting all the children to bed, curled around them at the headboard with her little black shoes still on, clean and dry.


End file.
